Contemplating Toes and Magical Feats
....is what I call it, but the official title is "College Drop-Off Day."
Dear Readers,
I’ve just had the perfect trifecta of a trip to the East Coast, so while I’m recovering, I’m pleased to offer this guest post from my teacher and friend, Francesca Moroney. Follow her Singing the Tune Without the Words on Substack.
COLLEGE DROP-OFF DAY
This morning, I woke before dawn to the sound
of a freight train cutting through this unfamiliar city.
I realized my right foot had lost its sock, making
my foot too cold for sleep. I tried spooning it
against the (sock-encased) left foot, then cradling it
in the crook of my left knee, but nothing helped.
In the hotel bed next to me, my 18-year-old daughter
slept. I couldn’t find the errant sock in the bed sheets,
nor did I want to wake her by rummaging for a new one.
Pulling the blanket over my head to block the light
from my phone, I googled,
“Why is my foot so cold?”
Although I found no particularly helpful answer, I learned
one human foot weighs less than two percent
of the entire body, causing me to wonder
how something so small could consume
all my attention. I learned the eight thousand
nerve endings in each foot can receive limitless
information from the billions of neurons in our brains.
I wondered if our feet also receive information from the neurons
of a heart. All day long, my daughter and I carried boxes.
Sometimes our feet climbed the stairs in unison, and other times
they met each other moving in opposite directions.
When we finished, we collapsed on the shag rug
we had unfurled last, after everything else
had been put away. We took our shoes off and she
put her feet in my lap, wanting me to rub them.
Although I was tempted, I did not tell her about
the 26 bones of the human foot. At birth, they are nothing
but cartilage, only stabilizing as we grow, solidifying into bone
sometime in our twenties. When my fingers grew too tired
to knead her feet any longer, we put our shoes back on.
She walked me to my rental car, where we hugged
goodbye beneath an orange sky. Before I drove away, I saw
my daughter’s size 10, still-forming feet lead her to a shortcut
through the grass, running towards her new home.
“College Drop-off Day” was originally published in Crosswinds Poetry Journal Volume IX, 2023
Thank you, Janice, for sharing this poem with your readers! I am grateful! xoxo